by Jean-Yves Le Moine, published on 11.12.2009

Many works, particularly from Hollywood, are full of references, inspired by narrative styles, themes and characters from other media. These crossed references go beyond the film, book or TV series and become a world, a semantic universe, which we called the metaverse in a previous post.

A transmedia work, by its literally “multi” media form, and through the relationship that it creates with the audience, is bound to be more active, through its progress in time and space, and must create a universe with its own rules, clear and defined. Such a universe, like ours, will allow the audience to live with other rules and other references, other ideals. If this universe calls upon references that are strong enough and famous enough to unite a community, then this group of fans will enrich that universe, expand it, and make it visible to a wider audience.

But the origin of this universe is the story. There is no universe without a good story, a story where the essence and the semantics allow the creation of this universe. This story must be universal, as mythical as possible. This story must also be carried by strong characters, to whom the audience will identify.

The story and the characters, are the fabric of our universe. And the forces that inhabit it, the forces born of the collective intelligence created by the fans, will transform this fabric under our eyes, remodel it, design it, for everyone’s pleasure.

The transmedia universe is an open universe, open to all, it has many doors, many sub-systems, which are both declensions and complements.

This notion of openness, this notion of the expansion of transmedia’s semantic universe, will be the sign of a successful work, or, in Jenkins’ words in the sub-title of his book “Convergence Culture”: old and new media collide.

To go further:

QUAND LES OEUVRES DEVIENNENT DES MONDES de David PEYRON in Réseaux, 2008/2-3 (n° 148-149)